Integration of multiple health information systems for quality improvement of radiologic care

ABSTRACTIn radiology, several Health Information Systems (HISs) are commonly used: Electronic Health Records (EHR), Radiology Information System (RIS), and Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS). Each HIS records partial and complementary information about the radiologic care process. Depending on the institution, the HISs that touch radiology can be distinct, disparate, and with different formats and meta information. We note no reported research on integrating multiple HISs to allow for an end-to-end tracking of the care patients receive. Therefore, the current Quality of Care (QoC) research is limited as it can only utilize data for partial workflow analysis. A comprehensive assessment of the QoC in radiology requires HISs be integrated such that key metrics can be extracted. We developed a novel technology called Department Data Depot (DDD) that integrates multiple HISs in radiology. We propose nine metrics defined upon DDD data measuring various dimensions of care quality. To demonstrate the...